Look Ahead (candy)

Before I took the final photograph I took a snapshot with my iPhone in the studio. My subjects have been bouncing around from minimal landscapes to portraits of cows (cowscapes)? I thought it was interesting seeing the latest cow portrait next to “Cloud & Sea” on my easel. Wondering how these paintings will relate to one another in the context of a gallery show. Each painting was done by the same hand, same mediums and the same general approach. They are different paintings but they both are sort of a simplistic study of isolation/solitude. These two in particular had a nice relationship and set my mind at ease to some degree.

Building a collection of paintings for a show is both exciting and a bit daunting. I am always wondering if I shouldn’t narrow my scope and make a really tight collection of paintings with a very specific subject holding them together. The problem is when I’m working I always get excited about “the next painting”. Often this leads to something seemingly unrelated to the previous piece. Tangents and random explorations are part of the creative process and lead to new ideas and often new approaches. In a perfect world I would love to have a massive space where I could hang paintings to really get the overall feel. Then I would replace paintings that were not bolstering the show. Remove paintings that felt redundant or didn’t enrich the overall feeling. Create new paintings that would fill out the collection in just the right way. Of course this is not a perfect world and that is just a daydream. So ultimately I will follow my gut when choosing pieces and have a little faith…

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4 thoughts on “Look Ahead (candy)”

I believe it is more important that your style is recognizable then how the subjects of your paintings relate to each-other, except if that plays an up most importance to you. If there is a specific theme outlined for the exhibition that would be something different, it is only a point of view of mine and regardless of it I would totally enjoy the show which holds your beautiful paintings!

Thanks for your input, always appreciate it! I agree the style is key. I just don’t want it to feel like a random assortment of work. I am calling it “shadows of the west”… Which feels broad but also references some of the subjects and shadowy images.